THEYtook off the bed clothes, including the two huge feather bolsters in the center.
"These bolsters are for the gingerbread effect that the German likes everywhere," explained the visitor. They examined the remaining construction. It was narrow and short. It suggested a granite-like base.
"Rock of Ages!" commented Anderson. "As you can't ask for an additional bed, all I can see is for you to swill beer and then you don't care where you sleep. That's the way the Germans do."
The journalist appeared disappointed in not meeting any of the family that first day. Frau was overwhelmed in kitchen duties and not presentable. The other members were away, working, working. Anderson had to be contented with Gard's description of them, after the latter had passed the cigars.
"Who's the spy in your family?" abruptly asked the elder.
"The spy?"
"Yes, the spy. Every well-regulated German family should have a spy in it."
"What for?" queried Kirtley in surprise.
"Why, for the Kaiser, of course. Who else? The Teutons call him euphemistically the Government. But without Wilhelm there wouldn't be any German Government."
"Why should he want spies in his own German families?" interrogated Gard innocently.
"Didn't every medieval feudal lord keep close tab on his subjects—the people he owned? The Kaiser wants to know of any signs of disloyalty. If a household harbors any foreigners, as your family is doing, he wants to know what they are up to."
"Do you mean to say that the Government knows about me—that I'm being watched?"
"They are at least ready to watch you. Mind you, Germany is a real block-house, and the elaborate spy system is an integral part of it. I should say, from what you tell me of the Buchers, that young Rudolph is the sleuth here."
"Rudolph?"
"Yes. He's doubtless keeping an eye on you and reporting to the authorities if there's anything suspicious about you and your actions."
And then the journalist, pleased to have a fresh listener, launched upon his pet idea.
"The Kaiser is preparing an abysmal pitfall for the world and it won't take heed. I tell you, Kirtley—and I want you to mark my words—Deutschland is going to spring at Europe like a tiger. The army and navy are ready for the onslaught. When they spring, it will be farewell to civilization—except the German—unless something like a miracle supervenes. The French army is being moth-eaten by the Socialists, the British navy has dry rot. I look to see Wilhelm practically the ruler of the earth. If not, he will cause it to pay a cost that will make the next fifty years groggy."
Kirtley thought this was jesting. He later learned that the "old man" was regarded as "cracked" on this topic. Every spring he prophesied war, but it had not come. The Kaiser failed to rush to Paris and there dictate terms to an astounded and cowed universe. People politely laughed in their sleeves. Yes,Anderson was a fine fellow, but they wearied of his dismal forebodings that came to naught. Some said it was because German had been hard for him to learn. He had taken it up when more than fifty and had become tangled in its snarling roots—its beer-drunken syntax. "He had got mad at the language." It was natural that he should get mad at the people.
Gard saw a light.
"Perhaps," he said, "that's what the Buchers really mean about the German army conquering everybody whenever it wants to."
"That's it, that's it!" Anderson was gratified by the confirmation. He went on with grave seriousness.
"I'm a journalist. I have opportunities to see behind the curtain, haven't I? I have been at the army maneuvers, at the officers' messes and dinners, when they were sober and when they were drunk. Beer loosened their tongues and they did not care. They talk of it, boast of it, and the civilian, too. I'm telling no secrets. They are very frank about it. Don't you hear the Buchers openly discussing it? They all give us warning and we say it's a fine day. Did you ever read any of the Kaiser's speeches in German? There you find it all.But he's crazy, they say. Crazy or not, he has the most thoroughly organized and powerful nation behind him that the globe ever saw. And behind him to a man."
"Why don't you write it up, then—tell people over home?" Gard ventured, somewhat impressed.
"Write it up? Tell people? That's what Ihavebeen doing for five years. But what's the use of shouting to a world of fools? No one will pay any attention to it. My paper sends my stuff back and says it don't want war talk—it wants peace talk. Americans are happy and they don't want to be disturbed. They only want to hear about what they want to believe. So it seems to be everywhere."
"I guess you are right about that," Gard testified. "I have been a pretty fair reader of our papers and periodicals and have never been made to feel there was any need for alarm."
"Exactly," Anderson scolded. "Why, look at our Exchange professors. They are coming over here, ready to swallow the Germans whole. The Kaiser invites them to lunch on his yacht, gives them a pat on the shoulder blade, and they are his. While the Germansplainly despise us, our educators go home crying Great is Germany! How superior are her people! Let us send our sons over there to drink of her wisdom and grandeur! What inanity! Bah!"
"And so here I am," Gard smiled. "But I have bunted into you almost the first thing."
"Couldn't do better—couldn't do better," repeated Anderson with a cheering turn. "I'll tell you what to do. I'll give you a little practical advice—free."
"It won't be worth much if it's free, will it?"
"Well, it's worth this rotten German cigar you've given me. Read the editorials and correspondence in the Dresden papers. They're a good sample. There you'll see what the German attitude toward us is officially, and what German hatred feeds on day by day. The trouble with Americans over here is they don't read anything serious. Of course our students study their text books. But generally our people just fly around, hear music, drink beer in the cafés, but they don't read. Too nervous—afraid of being bored. So they don't learn much."
Anderson ran on into other subjects.
"One great thing about the German system is that it would make such people work to some purpose. We don't. It also makes its plodders work. This Government recognizes frankly that most of its population, like all populations, are plodders, and it gives them something regularly to do and sees that they do it. This converts this dull element into an organized strength—a source of power. The Germans practice their wonderful economies with respect to the poorest kind of human energy. They kick something into their drones. So they are such a mighty nation in a small land.
"In America, in other countries, this element is rather a disorganized weakness. It is not pushed. It is for the most part waste material or neglected material. Our public system, when economies are concerned, first considers money, property. It seems sometimes as if our free individualistic plan of government were, after all, adapted for the minority of the bright-witted."
HADthe Buchers ever known an American before you came?" Anderson interrupted himself.
"No."
"How do you think they like you?"
"I guess if I dropped out of their lives, I would not create much of a splash."
"You'll find they hate you. Hate is the German religion. The Germans can hate people they've never known, never seen. They hate on principle and without principle. Of course it's the proper precursor for their programme of conquering the world. If they were trying to love the world, they could not be preparing to demolish it and expecting to."
Though Anderson had lived so long among the Teutons, he had not become Teutonized. He was a marked exception. He viewed thenation with a metallic aplomb that at times sent shivers down Kirtley's spine.
"Now this family of yours," he went on discursively—"don't you notice about them and in them and behind them something tremendously unifying and propelling that is lacking in our American home?"
"I certainly do," responded Gard. "I can't make it out—their dynamic, conscientious industry. What is it for? It's not with the idea of making money—like Americans, eager to accumulate the dollars. It's not for personal fame. It's not for any ambitious social position. It does not seem to be for any of the reasons that inspire an American household. And yet it is here, in this house, in every room, behind every chair at table, night and morning. It's bigger than anything we find in our Yankee life because it's beyond and higher than mere individuality. It makes the Buchers satisfied and still is something that has fearfulness lurking about it. It's not religious or divine—they are not actuated by such motives, do not speak of them. What in the world is it that the Germans have that is so wonderful and we do not seem to have?"
Kirtley had thought a great deal about this and talked almost fluently.
"I'll tell you," and the old correspondent, bent forward toward him earnestly, glad that he had a young, receptive mind opened out toward him. "I'll tell you. It's simply the Hohenzollern in his mad and unconcealed pride about ruling the universe. He is in every German home like this, driving each individual to work the best, to make the most of himself and of herself, and without loss of time. He makes them understand that it's for the great German race—that they may become the potent force everywhere—leaders of mankind as he has taught them they deserve to be. It is for the benefit of their more and more deserving nation. But it is first and foremost for himself and his family. He has a burning, itching desire to reign everywhere. He is not a normal man physically and is unbalanced by a monumental vanity—arrogance—egotism.
"When your Frau is so busily sewing, she is sewing for her household, it is true, but she is consciously and unconsciously sewing for Wilhelm. When your Fräulein goes out to her etching lesson, she is aware of being ofthe magnificent German people, and shares a part of the national ambition to excel. It's this that we haven't got in America and can't well have under our system. But it's this unified, disciplined zeal that enables two or three ordinary Germans to do what it takes four ordinary Yankees to do. Clad in armor and with a glistening sword in hand, Germania ought to scare men, and they are not taking the warning.
"But, Kirtley, it scares me. I feel—see—something awful coming. In the universal German hate, the national boundary stops any flow outward of sympathy, good faith, equity. All peoples outside are human insects whom it is proper for the Teuton to tread on if he can, crush the life out of, because they are in his pathway to glory."
Kirtley, who had stared at his new friend in this solemnity, turned a serious face toward the clawlike branches of his linden in its gauntness of late autumn-tide. This meaning of the animus that was impelling his odd and yet so normal German household, he began to see, was substantiated by a score of acts and attitudes in its daily life. He scarcely deemed it proper to tell of them.
Besides, he did not want to fire up Anderson who already was so unsettled, so comfortless, on the subject. But Kirtley was reasoning out how this animus gave a solidity, a solidarity, to the German household—a satisfied contentment—because it was working toward a definite racial goal. Any such incentive was almost absent in the American family.
"And so," wound up Anderson with epigrams, "the years will be left humanity to weep these days ofinsoucianceand neglect. You can see that Germany is a man-made nation. It is not the kind God or Nature would make. God must have turned His face when the Teuton species was manufactured. Germany is like a man-made hot air register. When it isn't throwing up hot air, it is throwing up cold air. It is always throwing up."
To change the somewhat painful theme, Kirtley soon began:
"I don't see any sports—such as we know them—in Germany. How do they get along without them?" Like all Yankee college men he was alert on these lines.
"No sports in Deutschland. Go out on the Dresden golf links of a morning and you'll find hardly a German soul playing. It's thesame in Vienna—the same in Berlin. They have links because it's the fashion in England. The Germans ape everything. Go out on the highway to Berlin or Vienna or any of the great roads and you will seldom meet any Germans touring in their motors for pleasure. Only Americans—English. The Germans are spoiling little time by such matters. They are busy—busy working for their Empire—busy like moles boring away to undermine the earth—busy drilling with arms.
"So you see no sporting terms incorporated in their daily language, in their newspaper language, such as we see in England and America—terms denoting fair play, square deal, manly courtesy toward the under dog. Our Anglo-Saxon motto, 'Don't hit him when he's down,' is no motto with the Germans. They think that's just the timetohit him. Kick him when he's flattened out. Kick him preferably in the face. That's one reason so many Teutons have scarred faces. The Anglo-Saxon spirit in a sporting crowd is for the little fellow. In Germany, it's for the big fellow—the fellow who already has everything on his side.
"This sort of thing, of course, kills the trueidea and fun of sport. Take away its knightliness of bearing, spirit of self-sacrifice, exhibition of pluck though defeat is certain, and what have you left to sport about? It merely becomes a question of brute force—overwhelming force. You have cruelty left as a net result. And that's a large part of German conduct—cruelty to underlings or to those who are feebler or caught at an unfair disadvantage. Having no leaven of sports is one thing that makes the German life seem so heavy, ominous, brutal, to us."
"Its growling rigidity, with all this," Anderson continued gravely, "is due to the fact that the old men are mainly in the saddle in Germany—men sixty and seventy. The existence and influence of young men are not as much in command as with us. These old Germans have disgruntled stomachs from so much drinking, and they roar about. Physical sports mean nothing to them. And so it seems sometimes as if the Germans are born old, not young. Their children are old. This helps make them such a serious race—the most serious. And yet people insist on believing that this serious race means nothing but funby all its military preparations. Where's the logic?"...
When the journalist went, Kirtley let him through the wall gate with its weighted rope. The gate flew back in place with a loud report as if to give emphasis to the old man's direful interpretations and prophecies.
INspite of Anderson, Gard could not make up his mind that Rudolph was anything more than a young braggadocio. The idea of an ordinary family living comfortably along with a spy in its midst, ready to inform on them and their guests, was so foreign to his notions, so caddish, that it weakened his confidence in his compatriot's judgment. While Gard felt that Rudi was not "straight," he could not consider him downright harmful. However, under the spur of the valuable significance that Anderson attached to this typical household life, Kirtley felt it profitable to observe closely its manifestations and opinions. They were verified in other German families where Gard often went with the Buchers. What could be more truly educational?
In defiance of the famous Teuton discipline, a certain disorderliness ran through the management of Villa Elsa. This surprised him. The eruptive way meals were served, the jumbled-up spectacle of the dining table, beds made up at any time of day, knitting and sewing going on in many rooms—all this was in unforeseen contrast to the rigorous military and educational training and precision. He could but compare thegenrepicture of looseness in the homes with that of the correct and fine army.
The inadequate, almost primitive, bathing facilities in Villa Elsa corresponded to the unscoured condition of its occupants. The unsightly hairiness of German skins seemed to answer for much washing. There was little thought of soap and hot water as a law of health, a delight, a luxury. Kirtley had assumed that soiled bodies did not betoken the loftiest state of man. But the bath was looked upon here as a disagreeable performance and accordingly was only indulged in at infrequent intervals. It was discussed freely at table as a forthcoming, dreaded event. Gard bathed in town. As for fresh underwear andhose, they were talked of over soup like some new and rare dispensation of Providence.
Fräulein alone had a toothbrush and powder, and they appeared rather conspicuously here and there as if they were modern ornaments of which the household was visibly proud. Bad breaths coming from decayed teeth and from stomachs sour with drink were freely blown about and without apologies. Indeed, apologies about anything were small features at all times.
There was no particular provision for the maid. Gard scarcely knew where or how she slept. Tekla dressed with unconcern in the kitchen and in the hall. Servant girls were rather considered like calves and therefore entitled to scant human consideration. The odors, the unsightly colors, the clatter of the German home, gave further evidence of the absence of sensitiveness, of any fine and balanced poise of nerves.
This repulsiveness of existence, of course, did not affect the audible consciousness of the family about their representing the most progressive state of civilized man. And not to be forgotten was the German ill-temperedness, which was pronounced in the morning, and didnot wear off considerably until stomachs were filled during the day. All these facts testified that the Teuton little cultivates loveliness in human contact. Beauty of living is not, with him, a natural end to attain.
After awhile it came over Kirtley that the Buchers showed no interest in his antecedents or in his country. Their apparent ignorance of America was rivaled by their indifference about it. They evidently were of the firm conclusion that there was nothing worth while there to learn, nothing worthy of attention. It was, to them, an unprofitable jumble of peoples and things in a rudimentary, unvarnished state of development. It was Patagonia trying to copy the ways of Europe. This was but a feature of the Teuton tribal belief that all the racial evolutions outside the German borders were undesirable, demoralizing and mischievously blocking the outspread ofKultur.
Gard could not but know of the limited income on which existence went on at Villa Elsa. It was characteristic. Though limited, the income wassecure. Despite the economies practiced, the prevailing confidence and self-satisfaction did not suffer, as a result, the slightest impairment. It was significantly German.
Gard said to himself:
"There are here none of the spectacular ups and downs, everlasting sudden changes and movings to and fro, riches one year, poverty the next, the unsettledness and acute money misfortunes, that make up so large a share of our feverish, restless, uncertain Yankee careers. There does not seem to be a synonym for 'hard up' in German. As for us Americans the habitual changes of location of the household, the separation of the parents for reasons of business, travel, or inharmonious temperaments, the resultant ever-growing crop of divorces, the frequent living apart of the children, both from fathers and mothers and from the home, the loose family ties and ignoring of kin who are not of the most immediate relationship—how far is all this from the steady, compact, solid, unanxious and unthreatened examples of Villa Elsa and German households in general!"
The Teutons had a paternal Government which they knew would not let them come to want. Their firesides could thrive and accomplish greatly on so small a basis because this was stationary and unfailing. The American needed so much more because, with him, allwas relatively unsafe. While he hesitated about rearing a large family for this reason among others, the German had no such thought of dodging the future, for he knew his children would be taken care of.
In fact, he raised his progeny conspicuously for the State. Parental feeling was secondary to the Kaiser's wishes. The Bucher children, like usual German children, were in effect dedicated to the Government, consecrated to its uses. It could come in and did come in and take this boy or girl for that and that one for this. It had designated Rudi for hydraulic engineering and indicated his university course to that end. Ernst was selected for philosophy. The parents were not only willing but proud of this. It was not for them to resent such outside interference because of any personal likes of their own.
Gard wrote Rebner:
"In America, the child's future is somewhat a matter of buffeting back and forth aimlessly between teacher and parent. The latter is disposed to shirk the responsibility by leaning on the shoulders of the instructor who is inclined to keep shifting the burden back to the home. As a result, while the German youngster isearly being adapted to a particular future course for which Nature has given him an aptitude, his American competitor is often left to drift through the years without definite ambition, or at least with only a belated or partly drilled preparation therefor."
In Germany, Kirtley observed, the Government stood as the real father. The actual father was its representative. The mother played a subsidiary rôle. All was the father idea. The Germans call it Fatherland, not Motherland, as the English affectionately term their own country.
This interposition of the State in the Teuton family weakens the links of personal tenderness. The State rather than Love rules the home. Hence resulted the unfeelingness that Kirtley observed in the life about him in Loschwitz—the roughness so little tempered with affection, but, instead, frankly interpreted and exhibited as the true bearing of the dominant male's masculine nobility.
Quite normally, then, came about the extensive amount of open and violent quarreling which Gard noticed in the households. In Villa Elsa the Herr quarreled with the Frau, each quarreled with the children, they quarreledwith Tekla, and she took it out on the dogs. It was not disputing among self-respecting equals, but ill-humored domineering over those who were confessedly underneath.
THEGerman text books that came in Gard's way proved the national craze for what was Deutsch,echt Deutsch, to the exclusion of what was not. It was almost a ferocity of inbreeding instruction. It created thefuror Teutonicus. The Hohenzollerns used education as a prod to madden the Germans. It kept stirred up, with increasing exaggeration and rage, the racial rabidness on the subject of other nations.
Kirtley still did not believe that this reached to America and Americans, for which topics, as already indicated, the Buchers had shown small curiosity in their intercourse with him, seldom mentioning the names. But his eyes were abruptly opened wide with astonishment and concealed indignation one evening at dinner.
It was a habit for the family, when nothingwas pressing, to remain at table discussing this and that, nearly always providing the theme was German. He encouraged this because he could learn from the well-stocked information which the members possessed about Germany and the Germans, and for the further reason of conversational opportunities.
It may be best to try to reproduce the scene in outline as it occurred. The talk had fallen upon governments, nations, peoples—a general field of inquiry for which Kirtley had had some predilection at college. The vast superiority of the German Government had been again, as often before, so emphasized in Villa Elsa that he felt now that he ought to raise a question. Should this overweening assumption always pass unnoticed, unqualified?
It was partly because the foreigner avoided disputing with the Germans, who made discussion unpleasant by their acrid, dictatorial manners and drowning diapasons, that their arrogance had so rapidly grown out of bounds. They do not recognize courtesies in debate, fly off the handle, burst in with interruptions on the half-finished statements and sentences of others.
Besides, Kirtley had not yet fully learnedthat they have not the same understanding of things, not the same definitions for the same words. For instance, the Buchers insisted that the Germans had the most freedom of any nation. But their freedom meant something like the liberty allowed in a prison yard. Free press? Yes, it was to be found in Deutschland in its highest state, since it was always authoritative. And there authority meant liberty of opinion. Again, thought was the most free and liberal there, because, as it seemed, the German was free to think just as the Kaiser thought. Equity? Equity was only what the Teutons wanted, and therefore of the most desirable type. And so on.
Such differences were usually antipodal—diametrically opposed. The reason, Gard worked out, was that in America and other democratic lands the significance of such words sprang from the common people upward. In Germany such interpretations proceeded essentially from the reigning family downward. Discussions under such circumstances, instead of leading toward mutual understanding, breed acrimony. There is little room for shadings, amicable approachments, progress in the direction of reciprocal enlightenment.
It was a nest of blustering, pugnacious hornets which Kirtley poked up on the evening in question, by asking:
"How do you prove that the German Government is the best?"
The Herr, taking his knife from his mouth—the Teuton eats conspicuously with his knife—suddenly showed that he had evidently, in the presence of his American guest, long held himself in on this subject with ill-feelings that clamored to be let loose.
"Prove it? Prove it?" he hoarsely exclaimed. "It needs no proof. Everybody knows it. Could we have the greatest people without the best Government? Could we have the best education without the best Government? Why does everybody come to Germany to study? Why didyoucome? It's because these things are true. Did you ever hear of young Germans going elsewhere to universities? They do not need to. We have the best."
The family were up in arms. Their Government had been questioned. Each member, with the exception of Fräulein, who was "at class," was bursting to talk about America. It had no army. Therefore it amounted tolittle. It had no higher education worthy of the name. It had only one institution that could claim to be called a university. It had no aristocracy. It was a country of low, lawless classes. These and similar sentences flew back at Kirtley, whose face reddened. The mask was being at last hurled off. What self-control, indeed, had the family before maintained, when they were so armed with displeasure concerning the United States! He would not have credited it. It was at least illuminating, if blinding. For what could be the excuse, provocation? Nothing that he had ever heard of. The two peoples had been so separate and distinct. The words of Anderson rushed into his mind. "The Germans can hate people they've never known, never seen. They hate on principle and without principle."
Knives and forks figured in the air, beer mugs were grabbed and banged down, napkins took refuge under the table as if in fright, to be indiscriminately dirtied under foot. The gulped down food, meeting the oncoming throaty expressions of irritability, created much alimentary confusion. Gard almost trembled. Here he had been for weeks dwelling in a friendly society, in an intimate relationship, without any realization of what ugly thoughts were secretly leveled at him in the form of a political unit. As an individual, he had been most welcome. As a citizen of the United States he was despised. The Herr vociferated:
"What is your country, tell me, what is your country? It isnichts, nichts. It is not a country. It is a ragout, a potpourri, a mess. We do not recognize such a country. It has no beginnings, no tradition, no unity of blood, no ideals——" He choked and the Frau flared forth while attempting to crack a nut between her teeth.
"The American people are the off-scourings of Europe. They were criminals, atheists, diseased people, failures, who were sent away from Europe. So they go and try to found a new race, a new nation. They try, but they fail of course...."
When his mother got out of breath, little Ernst began with a milder, more judicial air, though he seemed partly to have memorized official declarations.
"Don't you think, Herr Kirtley, it stands to reason that our reigning family, which is admitted to be honest and has practiced rulingfor centuries, knows better how to govern a race than the always new and untried persons who keep taking the reins of government in a democracy? The Americans can never tell far ahead who is to rule. There are changes all the time. How can the citizen prepare confidently for the future? How can he plan long ahead as we do? I have always read that this is the reason things are so steady and stable in Germany and so uncertain and wabbling in America. This uncertainty hanging over a republic unsettles its population. You have panics, lynchings, graft. We are free of such scourges. Our Government is always the same unit and to be relied on. If new policies are begun, it is there to carry them through to their logical end, even if it takes a generation or longer. You have always new statesmen with new ideas. We no sooner learn to know of one of your politicians than he is dropped and we must read about another in control. How does that make for any well-considered and thoroughly demonstrated plans? Would it not be the natural result that the German people are completely contented and the American people are always discontented?"
Rudolph's excited pronouncements ran along a different line, interchanged with voluminous whiffs of tobacco.
"Under our Government, Herr Kirtley, the German flag is seen in all parts of the globe. And wherever it is seen, it is respected, feared. Who ever sees the American flag? EvenIdon't know what it looks like. It is not feared. It is only noticed out of voluntary courtesy. And a nation can't be really great without an army like ours. The army is the spine of the country. It makes a country a vertebrate. What would even Germany be without its army? Almost nothing. The army consolidates, trains, disciplines. It gives us health, good constitutions, industrious habits, exactness. It makes a nation superior because it fortifies human effort. In the constant changing of our regiments about to different sections of the Empire, our soldiers come to be well acquainted everywhere. They make friends and are at home in every direction. They learn to realize how great we are and this strengthens the German feeling and makes all parts of the nation one.
"Of course we have the only first-class army. All our General Staff has to do anyday is to say the word and, as I have so often said, our army can go out and defeat the world. Our navy will soon be in a position to destroy England's. We are getting her trade routes, her mail routes. Our goods are now selling everywhere. It is not only because they are the best and the cheapest, but because our army and our navy stand behind them tomakepeople know what is best for them. Every little German box of goods has a big gun behind it. Of course we don't need to use the gun—yet—because people are crying for our manufactures all over the world. If we had occupied your big and half-developed country in your place, we would have long ago been the only great State. There would have been no others. We would have annihilated them if they were not willing to become German provinces."
Rudi took a long pull at his cigarette, with his elbows outspread like the haughty wings of the Prussian eagles of war. Emitting a long streamer of smoke, he summed up the whole thing in a nutshell with a derisory—Pouf!
Kirtley was inwardly fired up with resentment. Then he had to smother a laugh. This exhibition of the family taken off its guard was more instructive than volumes of discussion he might read about the true German attitude toward America—toward everyone. Were these but Goths with the German skins scratched off a little? He kept thinking of Anderson—how it furnished the pure evidence of what the latter was despairing of before deaf ears! Gard's respect, his sympathy, for the old man, jumped up with patriotic fervor.
He marveled at first how the good Buchers had been primed with this knowledge, these comparisons. Then he realized that the editorials and other articles in the Dresden journals, whose lengthy, heavy, pounding sentences confused with an obtuse, inverted syntax he was reading at Anderson's suggestion, accounted for these venomous conceptions and prejudices.
"So it is our duty to hate," broke in the Herr once more, with croaks and grunts now behind his long porcelain pipe which roved down over his stomach, a green tassel dangling at the end. "We give our children beatings to educate them, don't we? So we have the best education. We must give the world a beating to improve it."
The Frau all the while could hardly restrain herself.
"You know what we in Germany callAmericans? We call them pigs—yes,pigs. America is like a big pig pen where everybody is wallowing over everybody for money—just for money."
"And Germany," added her elder son, "is just waiting till the United States gets money enough, then we go in with ournavyand ourarmyand take it all."
Gard wanted to see how far theywouldgo, and he had seen. Was this the old barbarian of the north risen to earth again, his rude garments of hide torn off, exposing him in his pristine, fighting nakedness? Where was the German under it all—the German who was taken to be civilized in heart and spirit as other men are? These law-abiding, stay-at-home people had deliberately grown in Villa Elsa this robust plant of contempt, so full-blossomed now and ready to exhale its noisome fumes which at moments almost stifled Kirtley with their poison. What would Rebner say to this with his golden, soul-felt opinions of the excelling race!
This hospitable and apparently harmless domicile was, in reality, like a martial encampment. Gard could not but conclude that he would have to leave Loschwitz. How could hefor a moment stay in face of these direct and hard-fisted attacks? And certainly Villa Elsa would not want to harbor a hog any longer. The similar households he had come to know, all such households, unquestionably bore the same furious grudges against the western hemisphere.
But Elsa? How could he leave her—like this? She was the first girl to excite seriously his affections. She seemed to strike the note of whatever was truly earnest in him. Yet did she, too, think Americans were pigs? Did she consider him of such an inferior breed? Perhaps, in her misled innocence, she did. Perhaps that was the reason why she acted toward him in an upsetting fashion which only the more tempted a certain tenacious element in his make-up.
THISastonishing outbreak in Villa Elsa was followed by something still more singular to Kirtley, or at least out of his reckoning. It was to stir the depths of his contemplations and comparisons and give him the sharpest look into German character he had yet received. It was to show him that a gaping abyss might be separating the Teuton from other western humanity. Having latterly doubted that the race was easy of sympathetic grasp, any true kinship, he now profoundly realized that instead of being able to approach it nearer in feeling the more he knew it, he was encountering very high cliffs that threatened forever to mark an inaccessible boundary line.
He had taken it for granted that the anti-American outburst would end the Buchers' relations with him. He must have turned out tobe very unwelcome. The very sight of him as one of the American pigs about the house must have been most unsatisfactory, distasteful. They could not from now on visibly wish him or any Yankee in their home. Their personal dignity could not permit their assault to be backed up afterward by any equivocal conduct toward him.
Then, too, they would expect that he would not want to remain. Had they not voluntarily, deliberately, hurled at him their defiant scorn of his people? Self-respect would demand his immediate departure.
As for himself, Gard passed a sleepless night thinking hotly about the episode. Toward morning he cooled off. These were boors. Why should he take to heart their boorishness? Richness was here indeed. Just the place to keep finding out the real German. Having let the bars down with such a bang and hullabaloo, the family would from now on readily and fully reveal themselves. It is a poor investigator and observer who is easily shied away from his purpose by taunts and ill-breeding.
But the miracle was that the Buchers went on exactly as before. They obviously saw noreasons for altering their friendly daily intercourse, nor did they have any idea that he should harbor a grievance. Beginning with the next morning, their usual amicable bearing and attentions continued uninterrupted. The family was not conscious of having tried to give mortal offense or to cause resentment from him.
For, to a German, blows in all senses are a normal part of living. His social habits indulge themselves in knocks, coarse attacks, unseemly abuse, as rather matters of course. He wields a bludgeon where more refined men would cut down with sarcasm or wither one with disdain. Blows are his natural method of instructing others and of getting himself instructed. "Good German blows" are what the Kaiser talked of loudly. To strike as well as to kick is a wholesome, healthful, righteous procedure, not to be grieved over, not to be kept rankling in the bosom. It is truth and fact in action, and action should always be forceful and decisive to be effective. The whipping of a school boy for any just cause should not be remembered by him throughout life as something to be allowed to fester or as calling for angry vengeance.
So Gard's hosts pursued the tenor of their ways as if that detonating night had witnessed nothing. Their insensitiveness about it included insensitiveness about him. In other words, he discovered that as you cannot insult a German, therefore he cannot insult you. He does not know about such things in the Anglo-Saxon meaning. His conception of social and moral values is so obtusely or radically different from those of the truly occidental civilizations that there is little common ground here. Consequently, in such relations, the Teuton does not feel anything to be sorry for. There is nothing for him to worry about in any shame the next day.
Kirtley learned gradually, through his dealings with tradesmen and in hearing business men talk in the cafés, that this underbred attitude extended into the German secular world. A German may cheat you, lie to you, take a grossly unfair advantage of your good faith, but he will not expect that this is going to interfere with a continuance of your business relations. It is only a part of the hard game of gain. If you indignantly enumerate to him the facts of your unpleasant discovery, he sees little about which to bear a grudge. Heis not humiliated. He merely and unfortunately did not succeed, or succeeded while unluckily you found him out.
Likewise if one lies to him, cheats him or otherwise mistreats him in a transaction, he does not permanently lay it up against the evil-doer. For he knows he would have done the same thing under similar circumstances. He is prepared to go on next week with the usual dealings. Of course he will complain with prompt vigor, and rage in his favorite fashion, but it is only because of his material loss or discomfort, not because of broken standards of trusted faith lying dishonored in the dust.
All this alien side of German character thus came to be lain before Gard like a scroll unrolled. He read its lines with eyes blinking in wonderment. And this was the people who were to lead the earth.
The only part of it he felt the Buchers did not comprehend and were disappointed about, was that he did not candidly acknowledge the porcine truth of all they had shouted at him. He was of a heterogeneous conglomeration called Yankees. He should admit it. He was stupid not to. For him not to join in theBucher chorus of Germany's greatness was a poor return for all they were doing for his ease and profit. But he was an American and of course the Americans—
It must be quickly acknowledged, it is true, that Kirtley's experiences and observations along these channels did not necessarily show that the Teuton is less honest than others. Let it be granted that he is fully as upright as anyone in the sum total of his commercial transactions. The point Gard uncovered was that here were full-fledged race traits and habitudes which stood counter to Christian ideals, were pagan in type, were due to a lower stratum of moral and social perceptions.
The explosion in Villa Elsa led him on to another revealment. What was it but a rather puerile performance? Tactless, boisterous youngsters blurt out the disagreeable sentiments of a household. The Buchers had acted like children. Laying aside all question of the wonderful German trained mind, knowledge, efficiency, Gard observed so much that was boy-like and girl-like in the adult Teuton life. No country has such a wealth of toys and juvenile story books as Germany. The Teuton weaves his nursery tales, so grotesque andstrikingly cruel, into his grown-up years. All this influence continues with him and affects him strongly as long as he lives. The mature German can kick, sulk, whine, much as his offspring do. When irritated he can easily act like anenfant terrible.
What is quaint, droll, distorted, comically ugly, or of a gingerbready effect, in Germany, is the expression of this childish strain. And it appeals particularly there to the youthfulness that remains in the hearts of visiting foreigners. It is accordingly one of the most popular Teuton aspects, especially among women and the young.